The Role Identities of University Academic-Managers in a Changing Environment: A Chinese Perspective
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The Role Identities of University Academic-Managers in a Changing Environment: A Chinese Perspective Ya-Ting Huang1 · Sun-keung Pang2
© De La Salle University 2015
Abstract Academic-managers, working at the middle tiers of university management with considerable power and authority, play an increasingly important role in the planning and execution of key university activities. Little attention has been paid to Chinese academic-managers, leaving their work at Chinese universities under-explored. This article, framed by role identity, aims to capture how academic-managers at Chinese universities perceive and internalize their management roles in a dynamic environment fraught with market-led and managerial reforms. Synthesis and analysis of qualitative data obtained through in-depth interviews, field notes, and documents reveal that the three prime role identities that are held by the academic-managers are the ‘manager’, the ‘scholar’, and the ‘bureaucrat’. Key issues that emerged from our study include the growing tensions that exist amongst the managerial, scholastic, and bureaucratic priorities of their roles. Furthermore, our collected data indicate that the perceived role identities are rooted in structural factors, including neo-liberal and new-managerial ideologies, the disciplinary community, and the officialistic culture embedded in the bureaucratic danwei tradition of Chinese universities.
& Ya-Ting Huang [email protected]; [email protected] Sun-keung Pang [email protected] 1
Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Room 606, Chen Kou Bun Building, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong
2
Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Room 427, Ho Tim Building, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong
Keywords Chinese academic-managers · Market-led and managerial reforms · Role identity · Qualitative case study
Introduction The term academic-manager (Henkel 2000), manageracademic (Deem 1998), or middle manager (ThomasGregory 2014), being widely utilized in the area of academic profession, refers to the Deans, deputy Deans or Heads of Departments (HoDs), who constitute a middlemanagement stratum at universities temporarily or permanently. This article uses the concept of role identity to explore the ways in which Chinese academic-managers negotiate and internalize their management roles in a changing environment. Since the 1980s, neo-liberalism and new managerialism have gained global significance and have caused unprecedented consequences in worldwide higher education (Waitere et al. 2011). On one hand, with the neo-liberal principle of converting public services into competitive markets (Rose 1999), universities are ‘empowered’ or ‘urged’ to act in the market and attain status or make profits through selling their ‘positional goods’ or knowledge goods (Marginson 2000). Universities have evolved from traditional ‘public sphere’ to ones that adhere to the market language of costs, profits, and competition. On the other hand, under the new managerial ideology
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